Today’s blog post is by a guest author, Adel du Toit, who is currently spearheading the effort by Cisco’s internal IT organization to deliver IT-as-a-Service internally, dubbed the Cisco IT “eStore.” Recently, the eStore team took home multiple awards, you can read more about that here. (If you’re not familiar with the eStore, be sure to check out my other blog posts regarding the eStore here and here.)

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Over the last few months I had to take a few steps back and admire the passion and dedication of the team as our Vision is starting to become a reality. For those less familiar with the Cisco IT eStore, have a look at the latest customer case study here. You can also check out the demo video below:

In the last few months the eStore team has delivered IT services, to any device, simply, while achieving broad adoption while showcasing Cisco as the #1 IT Company thanks to Cisco Prime Service Catalog, which is the underlying foundation for our end-user storefront interface.

Delivered IT services:

We have 2 ways of delivering IT services and apps. In estore.cisco.com employees can find the IT services that one needs to order from a desktop or laptop computer. As for mobile devices, employees can go to eStore for Mobile to install the apps he or she needs to stay productive whilst on the go.

Today we have nearly 290 IT services and mobile apps that our users can choose from:

To Any Device:

It is important to embrace BYOD and at Cisco we live this every day. It was important that the store we created could be used by any device.

Below is a breakdown of the device types that have accessed both eStore over the last 6 months.

User experience is important to us and we wanted to make sure that the store provides a similar experience to what you would expect when shopping at Amazon or eBay, for example.

In both our mobile and web interface we have the ability to surface the apps and services most needed by our end users:

The Cisco IT eStore (Desktop Version)

The Cisco IT eStore (on iOS mobile)

Adding spotlight content and recommendations is important to help with findability and user experience. This was made possible by the latest release of Cisco Prime Service Catalog, which introduced a next-generation user interface and powers the storefront that the eStore is built on. Be sure to check out Phillipe’s post on the latest release here.

Achieving broad adoption…

One of the most recently added features in the internal Cisco IT eStore has been the addition of desktop software for employees to download. Going forward, we expect to see around 20k unique visitors a month ordering Desktop Software from eStore. For the first time we will have a single, unified platform for both Mac and Windows users to install their software from.

In addition, during our Global Sales Conference (GSX) in Las Vegas in late August we had the requirements to support 18,000 Sales users downloading the recommended mobile apps during the event. We had to be ready to surface the apps, but also support 18k users downloading the event app in a 15 minute period!

Lots of long hours and planning later, we made sure that all of this happened seamlessly, here are a few statistics from the event:

– 89% of the GSX attendees installed eStore for Mobile

– During the event we had 5.4k average visits a day

– 81% of the attendees installed the GSX event app from the store

– 49% of the attendees also installed other apps in addition to downloading the event app

– Very few support issues (less than 40 total!)

– Our max CPU stayed below 12%

– With an average load response time of 1.7 secs

If we take a step back and also look at our overall adoption for Q4, FY14 the numbers look very healthy. Nearly 50k requisitions in the 3 months period from May to July 2014.

…While showcasing Cisco as the #1 IT Company

The Cisco eStore team is no stranger to awards, and we continue to add our trophy cabinet with our latest award, the Gold Stevie Winner for Information Technology Team of the Year. For more information on the latest awards, be sure to check out this blog post detailing all of the awards we won this year at the International Business Awards.

Want to learn more? We have a webinar coming up on October 8th at 8 am PDT where we will discuss best practices for delivering Enterprise IT-as-a-Service, and delve deeper into the latest developments in both the Cisco IT eStore and Cisco Prime Service Catalog. You can register here.

Thanks for reading. For more info be sure to follow us on Twitter @CiscoIT to learn more about the Cisco IT eStore, and follow @CiscoUM for the latest info on Prime Service Catalog.

If you aren’t familiar with the Cisco IT eStore and Cisco Prime Service Catalog, this intro video provides a great overview:

Now we are very proud to announce that Cisco IT has won not just one more, but four new honors: the 2014 “Stevie” Awards from International Business Awards.

The Stevie Awards, which honor and generate public recognition of achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals, feature some of the most exciting work in business and information technology.

This year, the team behind the Cisco IT eStore was recognized with a Gold Stevie Award for Information Technology Team of the Year. As this internal implementation of Cisco Prime Service Catalog grows in scale, this team has been working to rapidly deploy new services (whether desktop applications or data center infrastructure) and new capabilities (e.g. a new mobile interface) to provide a single, one-stop shop for all IT services at Cisco. It’s effectively the internal “IT app store” within Cisco for all employees.

For more information on the Cisco IT eStore initiative, you can check out the case study here, my write-up on the eStore here, Adel du Toit’s blog post on the Cisco IT initiative here, and a great overview session from our recent Cisco Live conference here.

Cisco IT also took home a Silver Stevie Award for their innovative work on our internal Lightweight Application Environment (LAE) – an innovative platform-as-a-service deployment that’s also powered by Cisco Prime Service Catalog as well as other tools including Jenkins and OpenShift.

Within Cisco, we have a private cloud – dubbed the Cisco IT Elastic Infrastructure Services (CITEIS) – that offers infrastructure-as-a-service with ready-to-go server, storage, and network resources for development teams. Together, CITEIS and the Lightweight Application Environment allow Cisco application developers to focus on application coding and testing, not on the underlying infrastructure or platform. The LAE is called “lightweight” because the ordering and provisioning processes places very light demands on developers.

For both and CITEIS and LAE, the eStore (Cisco Prime Service Catalog) gives developers an easy-to-use, self-service portal for ordering and provisioning their application environment – providing on-demand access to the infrastructure as well as the required operating system, middleware, and system functions without manual provisioning by Cisco IT. All the resources they need are delivered just a few minutes after the developer orders them. Here’s an example screenshot:

You can read more about how Cisco IT enabled this Lightweight Application Environment in this blog post here.

The final two Stevie Awards for Cisco IT this year were a Silver & Bronze medal for the Information Technology Executive of the year – awarded to our very own V C Gopalratnam (Cisco IT Vice President) and Michael Myers (Cisco’s Senior Director of Information Systems for Cloud Orchestration and Platform Service) respectively.

V C and Michael have played key roles in both the aforementioned CITEIS and LAE initiatives, enabling IaaS and PaaS via the Cisco IT eStore and Cisco Prime Service Catalog. We’re excited that these executives are being recognized for their leadership, and we look forward to what lies ahead for the Cisco IT and eStore team going forward.

(If you haven’t heard about Cisco IT’s eStore, be sure to check out my recent write-up about eStore. You can also read the case study here, and read more from Adel du Toit who blogged about Cisco IT’s initiative here last June.)

We are thrilled to see Cisco IT being recognized for it’s internal Cisco Prime Service Catalog deployment. It’s a great testament to the innovative partnership between our product engineering teams and our internal IT organization.

That’s not all … This week at Interop Las Vegas, adjacent to the InformationWeek Elite 100 awards ceremony, was the announcement of the newCisco Mobile Workplace Solution – where Cisco Prime Service Catalog serves as the unified IT storefront for mobility services (you can read a great overview of the new solution from Jonathan’s blog post here). We showcased a live demo of the award-winning Cisco IT internal implementation of the Cisco Prime Service Catalog: the Cisco IT eStore.

As enterprise IT organizations adopt and implement their mobility strategies, they are learning just how much their end users expect and need in today’s increasingly mobile environment. For example, they need a simple, easy-to-use, and automated solution for ordering all of the mobility and other workplace services an IT organization may offer – rather than having separate portals for requesting smartphones, tablets, mobile apps, desktop software, laptops, or BYOD services. A unified service catalog and single access point for all IT services increases workforce productivity, with a better employee experience and improved satisfaction with IT.

As Jonathan describes in the blog post linked above, organizations typically begin from a device-focused approach. IT often focuses on corporate-liable devices or employee owned devices, providing an easy way to onboard these devices and access basic services. Then, organizations progress to the application-focused phase, where the enterprise leverages mobile applications to provide productivity and empower employees.

The third and final step in the enterprise mobility journey is experience-focused. After having fulfilled the initial device-focused and app-focused stages, organizations are becoming experience-focused and prioritizing service automation to improve the employee experience and provide an easy-to-use, automated self-service experience.

We had some exciting sessions featuring Cisco Prime Service Catalog at Cisco Live Milan a few weeks ago. In case you missed it, we featured two great customer case studies.

One of them was Steria, a multinational service provider headquartered in France who has deployed Cisco Prime Service Catalog and FlexPod for their cloud services and innovative Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) solution: “Workplace on Command.” You can click here to download their Cisco Live presentation, and check out their written case study here.

The other customer we featured was a Fortune 100 enterprise: none other than our very own Cisco IT. The Cisco Live presentation about their internal IT service catalog deployment (dubbed “eStore”) is here – you can also read a detailed case study write-up here.

[Screenshot of eStore: the Cisco IT deployment of Cisco Prime Service Catalog]

Adel du Toit, who heads the Cisco eStore project, wrote a blog post about Cisco IT’s initiative here last June. Led by Adel and her colleageues, the internal Cisco IT eStore has been rapidly evolving, and has been deployed for a variety of use cases, including BYOD, mobile apps, collaboration, communications, desktop services, employee onboarding, networking, data center computing, and much more. Powered by Cisco Prime Service Catalog together with Cisco Process Orchestrator for automated service provisioning, the eStore is the “one stop shop” for all IT services within Cisco.

[Cisco IT’s eStore: a unified IT service catalog for all internal tools, apps, and services]

Recently, the eStore upgraded to the latest version of Cisco Prime Service Catalog, version 10.0. The eStore has also rolled out a mobile user interface that allows Cisco employees to download mobile apps to increase productivity and reduce unproductive approval cycles.

[The Cisco IT eStore mobile version]

This has enabled Cisco IT to provide a consumer-oriented shopping experience for IT services to all our employees, not unlike their experience as consumers with Amazon.com and the Apple App Store.

Interested in learning more? Join us on February 26th at 11 am EST / 8 am PST to learn more about how Cisco IT is automating IT-as-a-Service via the eStore and Cisco Prime Service Catalog. You can register here: http://cs.co/6014eN9j.

Major change and growth is happening in the way data centers are functioning. This change is being led by cloud technology.

IT’s role is changing from an infrastructure provider to strategic business partner. The new role for IT is to align you with the services you need, when you need them, from a portfolio of internal or external services.

Once viewed as your organization’s virtual machine dispenser, cloud is quickly maturing. You have expectations beyond virtual machines. You need applications along with the underlying components that support that application. You need an automated way to manage application life cycles as well as integrate business financials.

Cisco has lived this data center evolution and has been surfing the sea of change. It has the tools for you to accelerate cloud delivery in your organization as well.

Introduced last week at CiscoLive Milan, Intelligent Automation for Cloud (IAC) 4.0 is a game changing solution that extends cloud beyond the data center. It is a great choice if you:

• Want a single modern business portal that acts as your central order point for IT or any business service. Cisco IAC delivers. With a modern, on-line shopping experience, you can order data center services, applications, development platforms and telephony or collaboration services with a single-click order experience.

• Require your cloud management to be heterogeneous not homogeneous. Cisco IAC 4.0 operates in concert with UCS Director to deliver a solid multi-vendor private cloud platform that spans physical and virtual infrastructure components. With this unique combination, you can shift your focus from “how to build” to delivering differentiated services for your organization to consume.

• Understand that networking is hard and a vendor with domain dominance is essential. Network services in the cloud are difficult and as a result the network team is rarely included in the cloud conversation. Cisco IAC’s out-of-box templates for network services, such as firewalls, load balancers, and VPNs, allows your network team to once again participate in the conversation.

• Want cloud governance that goes beyond basic health and status. With advanced financial management across multiple tenants and platforms, you can tailor prices per tenant, or geography, or application type. When you order a service, Cisco IAC automatically delivers a price quote which becomes a threshold to which consumption, by budget or actual resource, can be tracked. When this threshold is reached, you will be notified that additional funds or resources are required or the service will be terminated.

There is a sea of change occurring in data centers today. You need a strategic partner who has the
vision to successfully navigate this change. Dive in and learn how Cisco IAC can support your business – like it supports Cisco’s data centers.

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